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Chula Vista robotics team vying for banner at global meet

Mark Saunders

12:16 PM, Apr 3, 2018

12:16 PM, Apr 3, 2018

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Rancho Del Rey Middle School's Royal Robotics team is a "well-oiled machine," as they like to put it. Each one of the team's talented students has a role and executes their jobs soundly. It's how they qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship in Kentucky on April 18.

Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

CHULA VISTA, Calif. (KGTV) - It takes a lot to run a robot. Engineers need to fix and maintain the creation. Coders need to tell it what to do. Battery techs make sure power is abundant. Managers organize data.

It sounds like a lot. But a group of Chula Vista students has it down to a science.

Rancho Del Rey Middle School's Royal Robotics team is a "well-oiled machine," as they like to put it. Each one of the team's talented students has a role and executes their jobs soundly.

It's how they qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship in Kentucky on April 18.

"We're going to have to go up against other robots from around the world that have gone to worlds through different awards. And generally, some of them will be tournament champions so we do have to make our robot highly effective to combat them,"

And the team has put in long hours to perfect their creation.

"They take the robot home with their parents' help and work on the weekends," teacher Kirk Braito said. "It's just an amazing amount of dedication."

Thanks to the completeness of their design notebook, which houses all their data, the team hopes to grab the award for best design and have a championship banner to hang at Rancho Del Rey.

But the team faces one last obstacle, getting to Kentucky.

"It is an enormous financial obligation that I'm trying desperately to make up because the funding is basically all us," Braito said.

The team has set up a GoFundMe to help with expenses and has raised almost half of their goal. You can also follow the team's progress on their website.

Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.